Google Adds “Play” To Its Navigation Bar, Pushes New Google Play Content Area

It’s not your imagination. Google’s navigation bar has gained a new “Play” option that, for the first time, has Google promoting its own content offerings: books, music, video and Android applications from recently rebranded Google Play site.

You can see the link below, and the home page has also gained a promotional link about Google Play below the search box:

Until now, Google’s navigation bar has only been used to help people navigate to Google’s own products and services. While Google Play is a Google service, it’s also unique in that it’s the only Google service that works as an online storefront for the company. Other services like Google Shopping (listed under the “More”) option still tend to point people “out” of Google to make purchases.

Google’s navigation bar was changed in February. One of the changes made then was to drop the “Video” link from the main menu and change it to YouTube. Google Video allows for searching for videos from across the entire web; YouTube is, of course, Google’s own video site. The Video search option remains available under the “More” menu.

Sponsored

Clayton Pritchard

This is sure to increase sales through Google and probably decrease sales through Amazon. It will allow Google to take more market share for digital media including books where Amazon is king right now.

http://www.mosaictec.com Mosaic Technology

The addition of the “Play” button to the Google
navigation toolbar is probably a sign that Google is ready to really launch
its Play service. It’s interesting to see what Google views as its hottest
services, based on how they are arranged on the navigation toolbar. It’s hard
to miss with the “New” button next to it.

Attend Our Conferences

Attend Marketing Land's SocialPro conference and learn fresh new strategies and tactics from some of the savviest brands and digital marketing agencies managing earned, owned and paid social media marketing campaigns across multiple platforms. Visit the SocialPro site to learn more..